Vestiges

Been in a slump, creatively and inspirationally. Not for this fic specifically, but for fanfiction in general. Ever since my milestone back in May this year, I started to ask THE QUESTION. I stopped asking 'what to write', and started to ask 'why should I write (fanfiction)?'

And then there was Living Twice. I'm dedicated to a fault. It's not an admirable personality trait sometimes-... I've been stuck trying to update it since July so I can move on. Yeah, so I'm back again. Damn, made it to 1 million. Why quit now?

For anyone still out there, I thank you for your patience and continued support. I'll keep on.

22.

There were sounds of heavy-duty ongoing repairs on and throughout the castle, and Marco could hear it all, even though it was a bit muffled through the stone walls and the heavy door that locked him inside his cell.

It didn't disturb him, however. Other things did.

He couldn't move a muscle below his neck; it would have been the equivalent of a complete crippling, though he could still feel. He could feel the burns he got from the battle a few days ago. He could feel the cuts. He could the slashes in his flesh, and the low-key fractures in his bones. Despite being well-fed (spoon fed, that is) by Hekapoo, he still felt a bit light-headed from his blood loss. He felt all the pains. Though they were healing at a fairly quick rate by his tenant, he still felt them, and he doubted that he would ever stop.

He also felt angry. The same old unquenchable and irrational anger. It was the emotion that had been steering him in his life for more than half a year now, ever since he was banished from Mewni.

Or it was Appendaxuz. He was the one steering him. But he knew that. Marco knew that Appendaxuz was steering him, and if Marco had to be honest with himself, he didn't like this road he was going down. They were well off the rails now.

"I killed Janna," Marco murmured, almost in disbelief, yet still feeling the ghost of her touch from when she pried the blade out of her chest. Probably didn't want to give him the memories (or the satisfaction, who knew how she thought?) of having him do it himself. Rolling his eyes down at his dead hands, he thought he could see her blood still on them, though Hekapoo had long ago washed him clean. He could still sense the nuances of battle spirit he had as he walked away from her fresh corpse, and suddenly regretted not even giving her a second look. He regretted kicking her body from off himself. He regretted slaughtering his friend, one of the few who genuinely cared about him, and kept pushing towards him no matter how hard he pushed back.

She was dead, and he regretted killing her.

Then the emotion passed as if it was screened away from him; he was soon back to 'normal'.

Marco narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Right. "Appendaxuz," he whispered lowly. With a little meditation, his consciousness fled back into the inner reaches of his psyche where Appendaxuz resided. It was there that he found the little man whiling away his time over a chessboard, as usual. It didn't miss his attention that his piece was in a square on the middle of the board, surrounded by pieces that look like the Queen and the members of the Magic High Commission. Elsewhere on the board, he was flanked by pieces that looked like Eclipsa, Toffee, and Higgs, but Marco paid little attention to the fact. At the moment, something was a bit more important that his tenant was charting out the scenarios of what was happening.

"Something you wanted to speak face-to-face about?"

"You know why I'm here."

"I might. But how about you tell me?" Ever the covert one, the 'magic' man wasn't about to let information spill without Marco specifying what he meant first. However, all he did was anger Marco, and the teen stepped forward, almost threateningly.

"How about I show you why?"

"No, no, I get it." Appendaxuz felt an involuntary bead of sweat sprout from nervousness and tried not to let it show. "Yes, I was the one who contrived it. Couldn't allow having you show your soft side, after all."

Marco blinked.

"In fact, it seemed as if it was your only side. I needed someone who was a bit more motivated to do anything without considering the means and anger seemed to be the best course. Anger, if you would realize, has always been labeled as 'bad' emotion. I associate anger with many things that are vital to your crusade. Being a survivalist. Having drive. Dedicating each strike with strength. Having no hesitance when facing your 'friends'. With anger, you would willingly fight. With anger, you push on when people try to hold you back with morals. With anger, you could oppose your so-called 'best friend'."

"Oppose Star?" Even at his innocent question, at the drop of her name from his own mouth, he felt his anger flare up almost uncontrollably. Marco sagged weakly in realization and before he could collapse, Appendaxuz waved his hand and willed a chair to appear. Marco fell back into the easy chair which pulled up to the chess table. "I was wondering…" Marco whispered, so low that Appendaxuz had to strain to hear. "Why I was angry, especially with Star. But it's not so simple, is it? Who is Star?"

"What you are to me, is what Star is to Glossaryck, if he still had half-a-mind, that is. While somewhat inappropriate to describe, I'll put it crudely; she is your exact opposite. She is the other 'King'." Appendaxuz tapped his chin in thought. "Opposites attract, perhaps. Maybe destiny is involved. Or the Universe simply rolled the dice unluckily. Who knows?"

"So… I'm the bad guy? Or is she the evil one? Am I the evil one?" Marco asked hesitantly, though Appendaxuz laughed at the boy's use of labels. "I'm not so sure anymore that-…" His mood did a quick one-eighty and became angry. "Fuck Star, I'm gonna make sure I finish her off this time!" He did a double-take in shock and stared at Appendaxuz, who only shrugged. "How long?!" Marco growled.

"I've been inducing this better side of you ever since you started to work with Lavabo. A bit of an experiment. I tried emotionless, I tried eagerness, I tried encouragement, even apathy, but seeing you rip into the laundry monsters when you were angry to be satisfactory. Well, a little apathy didn't hurt either, not to mention focusing more on your views that Mewni is just another city that needed a revolution of sorts. An angry Marco was the firestarter. An angry Marco could fight the powerful High Commission." Appendaxuz gave his host a deadpan look, completely serious. "A Marco would kneel and bow down to Star. An angry Marco could and would fight Star on equal terms."

"Do you even have any idea of the amount of shit dribbling out of your mouth?" Marco shouted. "I don't know how you did it, but you'd better reverse it or-"

"Or what? Allow the entire Universe to fall apart into the aether, all because you couldn't make a few sacrifices? I've made them all my life. And Marco…" Appendaxuz smiled grimly. "I've lived a very long life."

Marco didn't know what to make of this. The usual option of being angry was available. He was also feeling disappointment for not having seen this happening from sooner.

He also wanted to smash Appendaxuz's face with a brick too. At least he was honest and told him that.

"Let me tell you what's going to happen. You can insist on having the blockade on all your emotions removed, end up failing, and the universe and every single layered multiverse in it gets annihilated, or you can keep the alternative-… keep on going the way you are now." Marco was about to argue, but the entity urged him to think it over carefully.

"This should be a no-brainer-…"

"Good, that means that you're not in danger of making the wrong choice."

Marco looked down his nose at Appendaxuz. "I don't think I like your attitude." Appendaxuz sighed deeply when he heard this, and leaned back in his seat as far back as possible in an effort to relax. For the first time, Marco took notice of how stressed he was and asked him why.

"Well, look at it from my point of view. I've been trying to stop the destruction of the universe for millennia because frankly, I like having somewhere to live." It came out more sarcastic than necessary, and Appendaxuz was laying it on in heaps. "I've been defeated by my brother countless times, the most recent defeat getting me locked up in a book. A book filled with the very thing I'm trying to put an end to. Do you follow?"

The Diaz silently motioned the man to continue, though he could tell where he was going to go with this.

"Now, we're probably ten days or less before everything goes to hell… no, that's not quite the right way to put it… hell is also its own dimension, too. Let's just describe it like this. Close your eyes." After reluctantly obliging the man, Appendaxuz asked Marco for what he 'saw'.

"Black. Darkness."

"Great. You 'see' something. Now, I want you to try to 'see' through the end of your elbow."

Marco's eyes opened in surprise. "I can't do that! That's not possible!"

"Well, that's basically what's going to exist. Not a shade of 'black', or darkness. Just… nothing. Maybe not even 'nothing', since that's technically something. But you get the point. Anyway, the only thing that can stop it is a teenage boy. Granted, he has powerful allies and decent skills, but as I'm saying, the only thing that can stop it is a teenage boy. What's stopping him from saving the Universe? Easy. His wants to have all of his emotions free from being blocked, and said emotions will cause him to falter in what should be done."

"When you put it like that…" Marco said hesitantly but still thought of something else. "You're powerful, why can't you fix this mess? Why do you even need me?"

"We've been over this before. I can't do anything to stop any of this while I'm imprisoned in you. I couldn't even contact you until you finally cleared your mind of enough of your teenage dramas with the princess. I'm too weak, especially without a host." Appendaxuz sounded resentful when he said the last, and he looked pointedly at Marco when he said it. "All I could do was give you some of my former powers. Besides, it's not as if I had much of a choice of whose body to jump into when they read the Book of Magic. Mostly princesses who work with Glossaryck, you know. Not to mention I was in the 'forbidden' chapter."

Marco swore to himself, but he ignored the insult in the man's explanation. "So I'm better than nothing. I've got your powers. I gotta save the universe. I'm a whiny brat who wants his 'weaknesses' back."

"True on all points."

"You know, you don't talk like you used to. You-"

"I'm going to die in a matter of hours, maybe minutes. I'm stuck in the body of the person who hopes to save the universe but wants his handicaps back. Said person is under lock and key, being guarded and has been debilitated with magic-… he can't even feed himself without help. So excuse me for sounding like… like you from a few months ago. A whiny brat."

"…Gee, thanks," Marco said sarcastically. Lowering his voice, "prick."

"You're welcome. Now, on the topic of your emotions… why want them back?"

"Are you kidding me?" Marco thought of all he'd gone through in the past half-year alone. "Star's name triggers me. I've turned on my friends from Mewni. I've killed Janna!" Marco felt some semblance of guilt throughout, but it barely registered. "It feels like my emotions are on the other side of a glass wall. I see them, I can almost touch them, but every time I start to come in contact with them when it concerns people with magic, I turn into a raging maniac!"

Appendaxuz was silent for a while as he thought about the boy's request. "I still think it was necessary. I'm a very ugly person, Diaz. But why, you ask? Because I represent fairness. I represent justice. I represent order. I represent stability, equality, and duality. Balance. If someone gets murdered, then the murderer is sentenced to death. Foolishness brings forth foolishness. Wisdom brings forth wisdom. Energy is converted, neither created or destroyed. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That sort of thing. You don't see much of that in recent times, don't you? People suing coffee shops because their coffee is too hot. Murderers getting away with a slap on the wrist. Royalty do whatever they want because of magic."

"I get it."

"No, I don't think you do." Appendaxuz looked down at the board for a moment and pointed at the Marco chess-piece. "You said that you didn't care if you were accused of being evil. I don't think that's true… in fact, you don't want to be the so-called 'bad-guy'. Don't worry about it… you're not."

"What do labels have to do with it?"

"I'm dying, Marco. And what do you think is going to happen when order dies? When I die?" True to his words, the Diaz more closely observed his tenant once more. He did look far weaker than he was before, more wrinkles in his face and breathing harder than what could be considered normal. "Trying to curb the heavy usage of magic since Mewni started abusing it hasn't done me or the universe any favors. While I don't mind being made to be the weaker one when compared to Glossaryck, him damning me the way he did has more than halved my longevity. I am the last pillar helping to hold up the universe along with the Wellspring. When I die, you're going to have even less time getting to the Wellspring, seeing as the source of magic is going to have to work twice as hard trying to keep everything together. Maybe when you step outside, you'll see that it's more than a little weird and wild."

"I knew that you were dying but…" Marco hesitated. "Knowing that you fucked with my emotions…"

"Don't feel that sorry for me? I know. I don't happen to care that much. Soon, I'll die anyway. Probably shouldn't have to care about the universe anymore, seeing that this crusade of yours should have been accomplished months ago. Too late for me, now. It'll soon be too late for the Universe too-… it's going to look like a dropped cake, then it won't exist…"

"I got that," Marco growled in exasperation, as his question still wasn't answered. "But what do LABELS have to do with it?"

"You're worried that you're evil. But you need to know the stakes. I'm helping to keep order in the Universe, but something is sapping my power, more than just the usual. The girl you killed… Janna…" Marco felt a brief pang of sadness before it devolved into the usual anger. He tried to turn it into anger against himself and was only mildly successful. Appendaxuz noticed what the boy was trying to do, and spoke aloud what he thought the boy wanted to say. "You're sorry that you killed her. She wasn't even trying to fight you… she only wanted you to stop fighting, especially your friends. A noble sentiment and you only acted against her in anger. You didn't mean to kill her… it just happened, as you were taking out your anger for Star against her instead."

Marco nodded sadly.

"But the labels in your head, whether or not they're true, they matter to you. You think you're the hero, or at least you used to think you were. Now you're starting to believe when people say that you're evil. I mean, of course you are. You killed so many of the Queen's soldiers, killed Janna and nearly finished off the rest of your friends, brutally even. But the fact of the matter is… Janna's alive."

"She is?" Marco was surprised to hear this. It was hard to believe, considering that he had pierced her heart himself with his sword-…

He tried not to think about it anymore.

"Yes. Undoubtedly, Omnitraxus Prime's ability to turn back time in people must be pulling on even more magic to bring her back to life. Meanwhile, my powers that warrant order, that is, things that die should remain dead…" Appendaxuz said seriously, watching Marco closely to see if he reacted, "is trying to keep her that way. My powers of maintaining order are automatic since I'm not outside of your psyche. I perhaps would try to allow this girl to be saved if I were outside of your mind, but that's not an option. Ominitraxus Prime, whether he's aware of the situation that the universe is in, hasn't stopped the time process, and I doubt he can."

"So if she's alive-…"

"Both alive and dead…"

"So if she's alive," Marco repeated hopefully now, finally allowing himself a smile in a long time. "Then I didn't really kill her!"

"Wrong. You DID. Haven't you been listening?" Appendaxuz shouted in one of his rare moments of being extremely fed up with Marco. "Just think! YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO INTERVENE!"

"Intervene? Like what? Stop your abilities of order so she can come back to life?" Marco asked hopefully.

"That's an option… if you don't mind having a shorter fuse before the destruction of the Universe. The other option is to finish her off to buy more time." Marco cursed when he heard this. It seemed as if he couldn't catch a break, and nearly caught himself crying.

"So I'm going to have to kill her… twice?"

"That's precisely what I mean." Before Marco's eyes, he started to see white cracks around him in the darkness around them, and the light that normally radiated from the stone fixed in Appendaxuz's forhead was getting weaker. He could tell that the little man was about to die, and asked him for his honest opinion. "I don't know what's best for your mental health right now. Thinking that you're evil or not, having a clean conscience or not, being angry or not… it's all your choice."

"I'll make them. But I do have a question… say that you die…"

"I'm about to," the man said emotionlessly.

"Then what happens after I destroy the Wellspring? What happens afterward? Will there be any order in the universe?" To this, Appendaxuz merely laughed a bit, and his teeth started to become serrated, like a shark's. Around them, more cracks formed, and the entity's light dimmed. Even more to the point, the man seemed to lose his form as a solid person and started to look more and more like a creature of nightmares.

"Someone will have to replace me. Enough said." To this, Marco's jaw dropped in horror, but Appendaxuz barely paid him any mind. He bade Marco farewell, and when Marco didn't budge, he urged him again to leave. "Get going, Marco. The Universe is waiting." Without any control on his part, Marco's legs stood up and started to walk away from the chess table, even as the pieces began to catch fire in a black and green flame. Everything around Appendaxuz began to burn as he did, but not once did the man flinch or scream in pain as Marco left him behind, and soon disappeared from his view.

The pain was unimaginable, but not once did Appendaxuz react to it, even as he burned to so much ashes, and then there was nothing at all as darkness remained in Marco's consciousness.

Awake now, now aware that his mind was now only his again, Marco felt hot streaks burning down his cheeks. His vision was clouded, and his eyes stung.

He was crying.

He stayed like that, bawling his eyes out, weeping for all he had done, in the grief of all that he had done and was about to do. There were fates worse than death that awaited him, and an eternity to live with them. His anguish got so bad that Hekapoo eventually had to come in and ask him what was wrong, worried that he was hurt or worse.

"…" A small smile came on his face as he thought about the demigoddess, wondering how she'd interact with his mother, though it fell into a sorrowful frown. He needed someone else who knew his family, someone closer to home. "I need you to tell Jackie something… She needs to pass on a message for me before you send her back to Earth."

"A message?" Hekapoo refrained from scratching her head in confusion. "Alright. What's the message?"

He wasn't going to be able to return home.

Once again, a small chapter that actually took place before the preceding one. This is what led to Hekapoo finding Jackie, and so on.

Anyway, about Marco being evil, it's still all about perspective. Sure, he was being manipulated, Appendaxuz admitted that before he died, but Marco accepted his reasons and understands why.

So was Marco really evil or not? Was Appendaxuz really evil or not? Evil methods, true, but it was for a good cause. Wasn't it? He wasn't lying, but damn if Marco didn't take things too far sometimes.

The next chapter should start The Pawn Fights V2. The Magic High Commission versus The Insurgency. But for another note, I'm willing to hear what Marco should do about Janna. I'm comparing notes, and I'm not entirely sure since Marco's fully emotional now. I mean, I have to choose higher stakes and more urgency with the end of the Universe with a cleaner conscience, or a truly evil Marco with more time to navigate No Man's Land later on, and said time can be used to develop the shippings of Markapoo and Miggs. Um… more properly. As I said before, it hinges on what happens to Janna, and I'm not sure which road to choose.

Valete!

MRAY 4TW.